Late Summer Fires
Late Summer Fires - meaning Summary
Drought and Scorched Land
The poem depicts late-summer fires across drought-stricken rural Australia. Smoke and blackened paddocks, charred stumps and inverted cattle convey a landscape altered by heat and burning. Despite damage, quotidian pastoral life persists: the last image of a family driving sheep through the yellow of the Aboriginal flag links labor and livelihood to national and cultural presence within an altered environment. The tone is observant and quietly stark.
Read Complete AnalysesThe paddocks shave black with a foam of smoke that stays, welling out of red-black wounds. In the white of a drought this happens. The hardcourt game. Logs that fume are mostly cattle, inverted, stubby. Tree stumps are kilns. Walloped, wiped, hand-pumped, even this day rolls over, slowly. At dusk, a family drives sheep out through the yellow of the Aboriginal flag.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.